Category Archives: Energy

Taxpayers and energy consumers pay through the nose for wind and solar subsidies while favoured companies and individuals clean up. Fair?

Across the countryside outside Toronto, wind turbines are spreading like a plague. They are being built over the strenuous objections of folks who live in rural towns, whose rights have been stomped on by the province. They’re chewing up birds. Worst of all, they’re chewing up billions of taxpayer dollars in the name of a green dream that’s nothing but a fantasy. …

Premier Dalton McGuinty has heard the voters speak. In an effort to placate them, the government is going to trim its subsidies to wind and solar development and give the rural folks some say. The bad news is that these changes won’t affect the contracts already in place. Taxpayers will still be on the hook for soaring energy bills for years to come.

The green energy bubble is bursting everywhere. As governments confront the worst economic conditions in decades, citizens are revolting against energy costs that have been artificially inflated by green schemes….

Spain, which is in serious economic trouble, has also decided to stop subsidizing new alternative energy projects.

Germany was forced on Wednesday to draw on its reserves for producing electricity for the second time this winter as Europe is gripped by a severe cold snap.

The country’s four main power operators requested the reserve generator at a coal-powered plant in southern Germany and two plants in Austria be activated, the regional environment ministry in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said.

The power station in Germany, in the southern city of Mannheim, would continue to be used Thursday, a spokesman said.

“We do not have a problem of supply, of quantity, it’s principally a question of stabilizing the network,” a spokeswoman for the Germany electricity market regulator said.

Germany also had to tap its reserves in early December. The system was set up in August to avoid shortages and stabilize the network for the country’s winter power provision. Read more:

“Stabilizing the network” because their wind farms weren’t up to it and because of anti-nuclear policies. But coal is the answer and we guess oil sands oil is too dirty. Sigh.

Nova Scotia is besotted with wind power. For those anticipating a wind farm coming to a location near them, here is some information they should be aware of.

A family from southwestern Ontario has launched a $1.5 million lawsuit accusing power company Suncor Energy of inflicting a long list of serious health issues on them by erecting a wind farm next to their home. …

“People knew full well going into this specific project that there were likely going to be problems,” says the Michauds’ lawyer, Eric Gillespie. He says that while the ERT ruled in July that the Kent Breeze project can continue to operate, it also acknowledged testimony from numerous experts called by all sides — wind farm opponents, Ontario’s Environment Ministry, and even Suncor Energy itself — that the project could potentially pose risks to human health. …

With the discussion taking place presently in the County re wind farms, perhaps the No Farms, No Food people should consider this:

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture wants the provincial government to temporarily pull the plug on industrial wind turbine development until serious shortcomings with the program can be fixed.

Federation president Mark Wales says the developments are pitting rural residents against each other. In addition during the past few weeks, members have told federation representatives about health problems associated with the turbines, concerns over the loss of farmland, encumbrances on their properties and other issues. …

Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli, the Progressive Conservative’s energy critic, says Ontario Auditor General’s Jim McCarter notes in his 2011 report released in December that for every job created in the wind and solar industries, two to four jobs in other sectors are lost because of higher electricity prices….

Among the federation’s concerns are:

• the price paid for wind power;
• the inefficiency of wind power – it can’t be stored for use during peak demand periods;
• setbacks and induced currents;
• health and nuisance matters; and
• removal of municipal input from wind turbine projects.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. … I’m not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.

It is very good news to see some rationality emerging on the “green” side especially from someone with the credentials of Monbiot. Perhaps the complete failure of wind as an alternative has also had a role to play in his conversion.

German Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle recently warned that Germany faces frequent power blackouts because too much ‘green electricity’ is being pumped onto the grid.

While this is a problem all four of Germany’s major electricity network operators have to deal with one time or another, Belgian-Australian company 50Hertz Transmission is particularly hard hit. It took over the monitoring and protection of the eastern German energy grid – which is home to more than 8,000 wind turbines – from Swedish company Vattenfall last year, and faces the threat of power outages much more often than its counterparts. [read more]

This is only one problem with wind power. It is also not as clean as it is purported to be.

Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.

Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology. [Read more]

Why is this important to us when we have who to vote for to worry about? Well when Scott comes knocking on your door, as he probably will, you might ask him which he would spend tax dollars on – wind or nuclear. Can you guess what his answer might be? Then you can ask him what he thinks of Monbiot’s conversion.